The Bed I Made (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

I take my hat off to you, sweetheart – you’re really playing hardball.

Well, if you want to play – if you’re sure that’s what you really want – let’s play. It’s always been like that with you, hasn’t it? But I’ll show you who’s strongest. You’ve got to learn that you’re never going to beat me.

You won’t come back and you won’t tell me where you are so I’ll have to find you myself. That’s the challenge, isn’t it? I could just cheat and ask Helen – it wouldn’t be difficult to track her down. But that would spoil the fun so I’ll play fair and work it out for myself. I know how your mind works – probably better than you do. How hard can it be?

I put my head in my hands and let myself cry. Fear broke over me in waves, constantly renewing. I was prey – prey that by resistance had made itself a prize. Why had I done it? I remembered the first night he’d taken me to dinner, how thrilled I’d been with myself, how I’d revelled in putting up my mock-resistance.
Engaged: one partner in a high-stakes game
. It was ego, my need to compete, to match him, to be thought clever. I’d laid my own trap.

‘The worst thing you can do,’ I’d read on one of the advice sites, ‘is to challenge a psychopath in a battle of wills. The psychopath’s need to prove him or herself the victor brooks no obstacle. By engaging him, you put yourself at considerable risk of violence, either emotional or physical.’

Sally dropped in at the café the next day. She had taken a day off from work, she told me, to get a bit of personal admin done. It was a grim afternoon; raining yet again. She’d stood on the step to shake her umbrella before coming in but her coat had been so wet that it had left a trail of drips from the doorway anyway. The rain had kept other customers away and Mary was out, so she stood with me at the counter and shared a pot of tea.

She seemed jumpier even than usual, I thought. I’d brought her out a stool from the kitchen but she hadn’t been able to stay still long enough to sit on it. Every couple of minutes she would wander away from the counter to look at something – the photographs, the drinks in the fridge, the view on to the High Street – before coming back and having another sip of her tea. I didn’t think it was me that made her nervous, I couldn’t see why I would, but nonetheless I had the strange sense that there was something she wanted from me: when we were talking, she watched my face closely, and whenever I said something, she waited for a second or two before replying, as if wanting to be sure I’d finished, even when I was telling her the most mundane details of what I’d been up to. I didn’t tell her about sailing with Pete, not wanting to seem to be laying claim to her friend. He would tell her anyway, no doubt.

It was only now that I realised how much it must have cost her to approach me that first time in Wavells; she must have really wanted to talk to me to have overcome her shyness like that. Suddenly she stopped pacing. ‘Do you ever feel like everything’s getting on top of you?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Tom’s in trouble at school – someone’s put a brick through the window of the science lab. He swears it wasn’t him but his track record’s against him. It’ll cost three hundred pounds to replace, apparently.’ She looked at me and shook her head. ‘I’m tired out.’

‘Come and have some supper at mine tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ve got wine, and I’ll cook us something.’

She looked almost wistful. ‘Thanks – I wish I could. It’s parents’ evening, though.’ She rolled her eyes and gave a sudden grin.

She was on her way out when Mary came in, water dripping from the brim of a red sou’wester. ‘How are you, Sally?’ she said, taking it off and running her hands through the front of her hair.

‘Oh, fine. Same as ever, you know. I’d better go.’

We watched from behind the counter as she put up her umbrella and vanished down the street towards the Square. ‘Funny girl,’ said Mary.

It was Thursday before Helen called me back. ‘Rushed off my feet at the moment,’ she said, ‘but it’s no excuse: I’m just a rubbish friend. Hey, guess what? Paul just rang. He’s getting married to that nutty Swiss girl.’

‘No way.’

‘Oh yes. Shotgun, too; she’s preggers – five months.’

I laughed. ‘It would have taken that. Brava!’

‘My thoughts exactly.’

I felt a wave of affection for her, my lovely warm friend. ‘When’s it going to be your turn to get snapped up?’ I said. ‘I’ve given up on myself now but I still have hopes for you. Anyone on the horizon?’

She sighed. ‘I’m just always at work. And I’m not doing office romance again.’

‘How about Saturday?’

‘What?’

‘You were out, weren’t you?’

‘Oh. Well, yes, but it was just one of those stupid dinner parties – you know, where you’re the only single woman at the table and no one else is drinking because the women are pregnant and the men are all too PC to have a glass of wine if their wife can’t. How did it ever come to this? That’s what I want to know.’

When we’d hung up, I asked myself why I hadn’t broached the subject of Richard. It was because I hadn’t felt able to; she’d been in such a light, funny mood that it had seemed inappropriate, and anyway, I loved that we could talk like that again, without any edge to the conversation. I hadn’t wanted to ruin it.

I was standing in Chris’s shop that Saturday before I acknowledged to myself the real reason I was there. ‘Peter,’ said Chris. ‘He told me what happened on the boat.’

‘I’m so embarrassed about it,’ I said.

‘He thinks he was rude to you.’

I shook my head. ‘It was understandable – and he wasn’t, anyway. And we both apologised.’

‘Least said, soonest mended then.’

‘Would you like to come to supper?’ I asked. ‘I promise there won’t be any broken glass in the pudding.’

‘Are you going to spill wine on my trousers or fall out of a taxi?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Well, it all sounds a bit dull, then,’ he said, smiling. ‘But I’d love to.’

On the walk home, I turned off the main road where it curved to follow the shoreline at Yarmouth and took the track down to the waterfront. I sat on the wooden barricade and watched the water for a few minutes before finding my phone in my bag. I hesitated, then took the coward’s way out and sent him a text. I expected the response to take a while, but in fact it was only two or three minutes before it arrived:
That would be good – thanks. See you then.

Chapter Twenty-six

At eight o’clock the following Saturday I stood at the sitting-room door and surveyed my arrangements. It was cramped, I had to admit – the armchair was pushed right back against the wall to make space for the table which I’d brought in from the kitchen – but otherwise it looked pretty good. I’d bought a tablecloth, new glasses for both wine and water and a vase which I had filled with peonies. There were new plates, too. It had felt extravagant, buying so much, but I hadn’t wanted them to have to drink from mismatched glasses and eat their supper from the awful earthenware crockery: nothing eaten from it ever tasted nice because it looked so ugly.

In the kitchen I lifted the lid on the hollandaise sauce and dipped in a teaspoon. The asparagus was already tied in bundles on the chopping board and the goulash was in the oven. Two bottles of claret were breathing on the counter. I’d forgotten how much I loved cooking for other people. I had often abandoned whole days of work in favour of flicking through recipe books and sourcing rare ingredients for the suppers I’d made for Richard. I used to comb the Thai and Chinese grocery shops in the little alleys off Earls Court Road, then spent the afternoon cooking and anticipating the evening ahead. I closed my eyes now against the memory of how those evenings had ended, with us tangled around each other in my bed.

I was wearing my grey woollen dress, the one even slightly smart piece of clothing I’d brought with me. This was the first time I’d worn it since I’d moved to the Island; apart from at the café where I wore a basic black skirt which I’d bought for the purpose at Marks & Spencer, I had been wearing jeans to the exclusion of almost everything else. Even to supper at Chris’s, I’d worn trousers. Earlier, getting dressed, I’d reached behind the pile of T-shirts on the shelf for the tangle of tights that I’d shoved there when I’d moved in, looking for some with a pattern to try and liven up the outfit. My hand had touched something hard. I knew immediately what it was: the box with Richard’s bangle. I hesitated momentarily, then took it out and opened it. There they were again, those savage faces, their streaming manes. I remembered the afternoon he’d given it to me, making love on the sofa, and snapped the lid shut again, nearly catching my fingers. My instinct had been to take it out on to the harbour and throw it in, let the water swallow it up like the stinking swan carcass. That, though, would be a waste, I decided: it was valuable. I would sell it instead.

I went back into the sitting room now and lit the long candles on the table and the smaller ones along the mantelpiece. When I switched off the main light, the clutter of furniture drew back against the walls and the table became the focus of the room. I was straightening one of the napkins again when there was a gentle knock on the kitchen door.

Through the glass panels I saw Chris. He was wearing a tweed jacket and a pale-blue shirt, newly ironed. The lines of the comb were still visible in his hair. The scent of freshly applied cologne enveloped me for a moment as he kissed me hello and pressed a bottle of red into my hands. I poured him a drink as he eased a box of mint thins out of his jacket pocket.

‘Are those potatoes dauphinoise?’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘My absolute favourite – Miranda used to make them for me as a birthday treat.’

He leant against the counter by the washing machine and chatted to me while I got the last few things ready. He’d been asked if he would sell the books from a house over in Bonchurch, he told me, the collection of a retired professor from Southampton University who’d recently died. ‘There’re wonderful things. Mostly natural history, Victorian botany studies, all beautifully illustrated. The son’s organising it and I get the impression he’d like to keep them but he’s pressed financially. Collectors will go for them, though – a couple in particular – so I hope there’ll be good news for him.’

I covered the granary rolls with tinfoil ready to go into the oven to warm and listened to him talking. The house had felt different as soon as he’d walked in; it had taken on new life as it had when Helen had been here over Christmas. It was the ease with which he made himself at home; there was no awkwardness or standing on ceremony, just familiarity and relaxed conversation.

I was filling a pan with water for the asparagus when Pete knocked, and Chris let him in. The room contracted immediately: there wasn’t more than six inches between the top of his head and the ceiling. I put the kettle down and moved towards him. He was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket I hadn’t seen before, and underneath it a lightweight charcoal jumper with the collar of a pale-grey shirt just visible at the neck. It was ridiculous, I knew it was only the clothes, but he seemed different. He was smiling a little, an odd smile that seemed to concentrate in one corner of his mouth, but I found it strangely difficult to meet his eye. I hesitated, wondering whether he would kiss my cheek as Chris had done, but instead he gave me the two bottles of wine he’d been carrying and moved away.

All the chairs were at the table in the sitting room so he folded himself down on to the third step of the stairs. I handed him a glass of wine, making myself look at him directly. He was freshly shaven, I registered, before I glanced away again to where his big feet overhung the edge of the step. Chris was working his way through the guacamole I’d made, ladling it up with carrots and Kettle chips. Both watched me as I stirred the hollandaise. ‘Why don’t you go through to the table?’ I said. ‘There’s not much room in there either but it’s better than watching me get things ready.’

‘Not at all.’ The grid of lines on Chris’s forehead contracted, as though the idea had offended him. ‘We’re here to see you. We’re not going to sit next door and let you do all the work.’

‘I think what he means,’ said Pete, ‘is that we’re going to let you do all the work but we’ll talk to you while you do it.’

Having worried that everything in the house looked tatty, when we sat down to eat I had the converse anxiety that they would see how far from casual I’d felt about this supper and inviting them into the cottage. I hadn’t been able to iron out the lines on the tablecloth which showed where it had been folded in the shop.
Hey
, I imagined it telegraphing to them both,
look at me. She bought me specially, you know. Life’s a bit different here normally
. By the time we were finishing the asparagus, however, I’d started to relax a little, helped no doubt by the fact that we were already at the bottom of the first bottle. I glanced across the table and watched Pete’s hands as he buttered the last of his roll. I had rarely seen his hands still, I thought; they were always moving, touching something, holding whatever it was he was subjecting to his scrutiny at any given time. He felt me watching him now and looked over, and I quickly looked away.